The full text of Conservative leader William Hague's letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy on the NHS.

"In recent weeks it has become apparent that the pressures on our National Health Service are coming to a head. When a flu outbreak can bring the service to its knees, it is time we engaged in some new and common sense thinking. Despite the supreme dedication of NHS staff, ours is now a system where success rates for many treatments compare unfavourably with those of our European neighbours, where political interference is undermining the ability of doctors to exercise their professional judgement, and where the overall levels of funding for health put the UK well below the EU average.

"On Sunday you stated, '...there are fundamental problems that we need to address, more doctors, more nurses, more beds, more long-term financing for the Health Service and a different system and structure in the Health Service also.' I agree. Where I disagree is that we have until 2005 to identify the answers. The people of this country deserve and have the right to expect that we do better, faster.

"The most positive start we can make is to take the party politics out of the debate over the future of our nation's health care system, which has bedevilled serious attempts to reform it over the past 15 years. In that spirit, I am today writing to you and to Charles Kennedy with what I believe to be the basis for delivering a better UK health system. It has three essential elements.

"The first is a guarantee to the NHS. It absolutely must not be privatised. Instead, the Health Service should receive long-term, stable financing and a commitment from all politicians that they will interfere less in the way it is run. This means increasing NHS funding in real terms over the long run; improving the management of the service, allowing it to be guided by its own clinical decisions; and giving a continued commitment to publicly-funded health care which is free at the point of delivery as now.

"Second, there needs to be a Patient's Guarantee that they will be treated according to clinical need. This means they should have a guaranteed waiting time determined by the professional judgement of doctors rather than the political judgement of advisers. It also means that if the NHS is unable to meet the guarantee, the resources of the independent health sector will be used. What matters to most people is knowing when they will be treated, not where they will be treated.

"Finally there should be a new partnership for better health care. The UK needs more resources for health across the board. We cannot afford to be inhibited by ideological objections to the existence of an independent sector. The impact of the recent flu crisis would have been tempered by better co-operation in advance between the public and independent sectors. The punishment meted out by our taxation system to those individuals and companies who seek to make health care provision for their families, themselves and their employees must end. It is only by creating the opportunity to expand health spending in both the public and independent sectors that we can hope to reach the total levels of spending of our major EU partners, and it is only by embracing both sectors that these countries have reached those levels in the first place.

"These three basic commitments form the basis of a common sense approach to reforming health care provision in this country. All I ask is whether you are open to them as the basis for a cross-party approach? Of course, as politicians we could choose to wait until the next general election to put our respective cases, but I believe the situation we face is now sufficiently grave that for the sake of the NHS, its patients and the nation, the work ought to begin now."